1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems and, more particularly, to systems and methods for storing and retrieving information.
2. Related Art
Computer users today are becoming increasingly sophisticated and demand systems that can provide automatic individualized preferences to any network device they use. On any given day, a computer user may use a number of electronic devices to access, for example, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN) or the Internet. These electronic devices may include, for example, personal computers (PCs) and Internet appliances such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, web pads, and the like. The user will typically prefer to have each of the devices he or she uses during the day configured in a particular orientation and/or have access to particular data depending on the device and its location, It would be desirable to have a system that automatically sets personal preferences and allows users to access relevant data when the user moves from device to device in accessing a network such as a LAN, a WAN, the Internet, and the like.
Currently available registry systems such as Microsoft Windows Registry provide computer users one method of setting personal preferences to devices such as PCs. The Windows Registry allows users to store personal preferences relating to applications and device configuration in a particular computer device, or on a network. For example, the Windows Registry allows users to store personal preferences for web-page browsers or device configurations, such as assigning a particular printer to be the default printer for a particular user on a particular device. If the same user goes to another device, unless the user manually sets preferences for each device, his/her preference settings will not be the same for each device. On the other hand, if the user uses a network registry, the user's preference settings will be the same on all machines even though the user may prefer that each device have a different set up. Thus, the Windows Registry provides users a limited means of storing personal configuration preferences that automatically activate when a user logs on to a particular computer or Internet appliance, or on a network.
The Microsoft Windows Registry may be viewed as being two-dimensional. The Windows Registry has a tree structure with a couple of different roots. As configured, the Windows Registry is only able to identify personal preferences based on a particular application and/or user. In other words, under Windows Registry, specific configurations or data can only be identified to a particular user or groups of users and/or a particular application or applications. This may be particularly limiting given the current advancement in computer technology and user behavior in which the user may prefer to have the same computer interface experience regardless of which device or location he is using.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to have a registry system which is three-dimensional or greater, providing more flexibility with automatic preference settings.